Many have argued that statistics students need additional facility to express statistical computations. By introducing students to commonplace tools for data management, visualization, and reproducible analysis in data science and applying these to r
eal-world scenarios, we prepare them to think statistically. In an era of increasingly big data, it is imperative that students develop data-related capacities, beginning with the introductory course. We believe that the integration of these precursors to data science into our curricula-early and often-will help statisticians be part of the dialogue regarding Big Data and Big Questions.
Within baseball analytics, there is substantial interest in comprehensive statistics intended to capture overall player performance. One such measure is Wins Above Replacement (WAR), which aggregates the contributions of a player in each facet of the
game: hitting, pitching, baserunning, and fielding. However, curre
